Windsor, Ontario poet Kate Hargreaves’ first trade poetry collection, Leak (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2014), is
striking for the sounds she generates, allowing the language to roll and toss
and spin in a fantastic display of gymnastic aural play so strong one can’t
help but hear the words leap off the page. Utilizing repetition, a variety of rhythms
and homonyms, Hargreaves’ poems mine the relationship between language and the
body, and rush and bounce like water through seven suite-sections: “Heap,” “Chew,”
“Skim,” “Pore,” “Chip,” and “Peel.” As she writes to open the poem “HIP TO BE
SQUARE”: “Her hips sink ships. Her hips just don’t swing. Her hips fit snugly
in skinny jeans. Her calves won’t squeeze in. Her hips check.” She manages to
make the clumsy, awkward and graceful tweaks and movements of the body into an
entirely physical act of language, bouncing across the page as a rich sequence
of gestures. Given the fact that she also published a collection of short
fiction, Talking Derby: Stories from a Life on Eight Wheels (Windsor ON: Black Moss Press, 2012), “a collection of
prose vignettes inspired by women’s flat-track roller derby,” this writer and
roller derby skater’s ability to articulate text in such an inspired and
physical way shouldn’t be entirely unexpected, but the fact that it is done so
well is something of a marvel.